A daily dose of odds and sods, some interesting, some bizarre, some funny, some thought provoking items which I have stumbled across the web. All to be taken with a grain of daily salt!!

Thursday, February 14

Jewish Heritage in India

I found this to be very interesting, and thanks to Aditi Bhadhuri who sent it into me! :). Some quotes:

Next to Hinduism, Judaism or Jewish religion claims the oldest history in India, as, per traditions, the first Jewish immigrants to India landed in Kodungaloor- Kerala 2000 years ago, fleeing from the second burning of the Jewish shrines in Palestine by the Romans. The third-century Bishop of Caesaria, Eusebius, writes of an Aramaic copy of the Gospel of St. Matthew which had been seen in India a hundred years before him!. The earliest settlements may even have dated from King Solomon's time, since such luxury items as ivory, peacocks and linen were imported from India during his reign.It was only in India, that the Jews, otherwise persecuted all over the world, lived for millennia in freedom and dignity, bathed in the affection of their Hindu brethren. India was the most hospitable of homes, to the Jewish nation from six distinct communities who fled to India: the ancient Cochin Jews from Palestine,, the once-forgotten Bene Israel settled in Maharashtra for the last 2000 years, Persian speaking Jews from Afghanistan and Iran who were the courtiers of the Mughal Empire, Portuguese Marranos from the Portugal of sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,, the commercially and industrially prominent Baghdadis from Baghdad, the scattered Ashkenazim( refugees from Nazi Germany), and today's tribal Jews of the far northeast, whom Israel has accepted in 1995 as a Lost tribe of Israel, dating from 800 B.C.